In August 2025, 161 Tibetan Buddhist nuns from institutions across India and Nepal – a record number – gathered at Dolma Ling Nunnery in northern India to take various levels of the Geshema examination. These exams prepare candidates to receive the Geshema degree, comparable to a doctorate in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. The nearly four-week gathering was especially notable because until 13 years ago, women were not allowed to participate.
Thanks to a greater emphasis on women's education, Tibetan Buddhist nuns are increasingly becoming teachers and abbesses. In monastic institutions and Buddhist centers worldwide, nuns are taking on leadership roles and being acknowledged for their scholarship, including the Geshema degree.
As a scholar of gender in religious studies, I study the changing roles of women in Buddhism. While nuns were long respected in Tibetan culture, they historically lacked access to the same educational and leadership opportunities as monks. That has changed, in part due to the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.
He encouraged nuns to pursue advanced degrees as part of his broader goal to increase gender parity. “Biologically there is no difference between the brains of men and women and the Buddha clearly gave equal rights to men and women,” he said in 2013. In addition to reciting prayers and performing rituals, he emphasized that nuns should study classic Buddhist texts, traditionally reserved for men.
Such guidance has helped challenge misconceptions about women's intellectual abilities and elevate their role in Buddhist scholarship. Nuns now teach philosophy, lead institutions, serve as role models, and enter long retreats – a staple of Buddhist contemplative practice.
The Dalai Lama has lived in exile since 1959, when he fled to northern India following unrest over the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Many Tibetans followed, and he has remained the key religious leader of the Tibetan diaspora, though he gave up political duties in 2011 to the Tibetan government in exile.
Improving education for Tibetan communities in India and Nepal has been crucial for preserving Tibetan culture, including Buddhism.
Historically, formal education was reserved for monks. In Tibet, nuns were primarily ritual specialists, according to scholars Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Mitra Härkönen and Nicola Schneider. They performed rituals but rarely studied Buddhist texts.
Even with the Dalai Lama's support, developing a curriculum for nuns comparable to monks’ was difficult, especially with few nunneries in India and Nepal, according to Schneider.
“When the nuns arrived in India, they were ill, exhausted, traumatized and impoverished,” recalled Lobsang Dechen, co-director of the nonprofit Tibetan Nuns Project, in 2023. “Many nuns had faced torture and imprisonment at the hands of the Chinese authorities in Tibet and endured immense physical and emotional pain. The existing nunneries in the struggling Tibetan refugee community in India were already overcrowded and could not accommodate them.”
Education was also hampered by limited literacy and monks who held administrative roles. The women essentially lived in “masculine institutions inhabited by nuns,” scholar Chandra Chiara Ehm argued in her ethnographic work on Kopan Nunnery in Nepal. Ehm found monk administrators often endorsed gender parity in name but did not support nuns’ education directly.
Access to education began to improve in the 1980s as more Tibetan nuns migrated to India and Nepal. A network of developed nunneries followed, such as Gaden Choling and Dolma Ling in Dharamshala, India, where the Dalai Lama lives.
These institutions were funded by organizations such as the Tibetan Nuns Project, part of the Tibetan Women's Association, which was established in Tibet in 1959 and reinstated in India in 1984 with the Dalai Lama’s blessing. The Tibetan Nuns Project was created soon after to support nuns from all Tibetan schools.
The Dalai Lama encouraged these organizations to build nunneries and support education. “In the beginning when I spoke about awarding Geshema degrees, some were doubtful,” he recalled in 2018. “I clearly told them that Buddha had given equal opportunity for both men and women.”
Other factors also promoted women’s advancement, including support from international organizations like Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women, which has hosted global meetings for nearly 40 years. In India, nonprofits such as the Ladakh Nuns Association have helped nuns work in health care.
Reaching the highest level of monastic teaching
The Geshema degree, available to nuns since 2012, is in the Geluk tradition, one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. These degrees are the highest level of monastic training but were previously available only to men, whose degrees are known as “khenpo” or “geshe.”
Candidates are tested after studying Buddhist texts. Nuns must score 75% or higher during 17 years of study to qualify for the Geshema exams.
In 2016, the Dalai Lama presided over and granted 20 Tibetan nuns Geshema degrees, four years after he and the Tibetan government in exile recognized higher degrees for nuns. Before the formal Geshema program, only one German nun, Kelsang Wango, had received a degree. Now, there are 73 Geshemas.
After the Geluk school began granting Geshema degrees, nuns in the other schools – Nyingma, Sakya and Kagyu – also began pursuing advanced degrees. In these branches, nuns carry the title “khenmo,” which, like the Geshema, qualifies them to teach Buddhist scriptures. In 2022, the Dalai Lama offered blessings to new Khenmo in the Sakya school.
All told, nuns are changing the course for Tibetan Buddhist women – and have had an ally in the Dalai Lama.
As more women reach the highest levels of learning, they expand their ability to lead in monastic and lay communities – improving education and helping preserve Tibetan culture.
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